for (;;) { printf(" 4 programmers ! ") ;}

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Booting…

My name is Manoel Ramon and I am addicted in software programming… this first post is a testimony about myself…

I was something around 10 years old when my cousin broke up with her boyfriend and he decided to try to reconnect with her thru me… well.. bad mistake 🙂
He showed up in my home with a personal computer.. it was a TK85 with amazing ROM 8Kb and RAM 16Kb based in Z80 processor… I could see loading programs using a regular tape (cassette) using a tape player and some wires..

After some minutes, the computer loaded a game in my TV !!! That was really cool!!! So, he left the computer with me and I started to read a BASIC MANUAL.

This was the first problem of my life:

10 PRINT "MANOEL RAMON"
20 GOTO 10

Then I typed “RUN” following ENTER

After this… I was totally addicted.. See the machine doing something that I created was fantastic.. Then, every morning I woke up at 7:00AM to watch a TV series called “Bits & Bytes” in the TV Cultura Brasil. This was a canadian TV series teaching people what is a personal computer, a processor, a interpreter, a computer program, how the memory works, etc.

After couple years I bough a revolutionary micro-computer called HOTBIT MSX manufactured by Sharp Brasil. It had amazing RAM 64Kb and ROM 32Kb.. Still using Z80 processor but running with a clock superior to 3.6Mhz and support to colored TV.

But after to boot the computer I saw the following screen:

28815 BYTES FREE!!! Where are the other 36Kb if the advertisement was 64Kb ? I felt cheated and a boy with 11 years old was calling to Sharp everything single day demanding an explanation because my computer indeed had some problem.. memory was missing there!!! Well, after to insist they explained to me the other 36Kb RAM was being used by the BASIC interpreter !!! My answer was: “Really ? That’s a bad code for a BASIC interpreter!!!”

After MSX, I got a PC XT and I started to problem in Pascal, C, C++, DBASE II, Lisp, and I never stopped anymore..

I grew up programming, I graduated in electronic and software engineering, worked many years with embedded devices in my country (Brazil) to Motorola Mobility and I moved to San Diego/CA in USA and now I am working to Intel Corporation… In parallel, I worked as contractor for many companies including Navy of Brazil developing data collector for centrifuges used for nuclear plants and other companies developing linux device drivers.

Thus, this blog is dedicated to all programmer that really loves “coding”… Let’s talk about programming languages, OS’s, frameworks like Android and Tizen, code performance, designs, and all nice stuff that makes our lives more fun and pay our bills.